The mirror test seems to me like a decent proxy for at least one item on that list
This is merely a bias on our own part as humans. I think people are confusing consciousness with self-awareness. They are completely different things. Consciousness is the OS that runs on the meat machine. Self-awareness is an algorithm that runs on the OS. All meat machines that run this OS have different algorithms for different functions. Some may not have any self-awareness algorithm running, some may have something similar but not exactly the same as our own self-awareness algorithm. That’s where the mirror test fails. We can only observe the who-knows-how-many-levels of causality that lead to those animals to show or not show self-aware behaviors in front of a mirror. We can’t say anything consequential about the actual algorithm(s) running on their OS when they stand in front of a mirror. We are just running our own set of self-awareness algorithms when we stand in front of a mirror. It seems like these algorithms change according to evolution, just like other systems within the multicellular ecosystem that make up the individual organisms. We often see animals that demonstrate these “self-aware” traits because of similar evolutionary conditions, like cats and dogs have evolved to run a lot of socializing algorithms that mingle well with our own social algorithms.
Whether the self-reflective aspect of running these algorithms on our own OS makes one feel certain way about eating meat is in and of itself the result of the relationship between multi-threading the self-aware part and the self-preservation part in terms of labeling kins and such.
At this point we aren’t even conclusive about where to draw the boundary between hardware and software. We end up distinguishing between OS and simple firmware as conscious and unconscious. We mostly reduce the firmware down to simple physical reactions by the laws of physics while the OS exhibits something magical beyond those physical reactions in simpler systems. Is there something truly different that sets OS apart from firmware, or is it just our lack of understanding of the underlying mechanics? This of course touches upon the argument of determinism, which is just looking at the same systems differently.
This is merely a bias on our own part as humans. I think people are confusing consciousness with self-awareness. They are completely different things. Consciousness is the OS that runs on the meat machine. Self-awareness is an algorithm that runs on the OS. All meat machines that run this OS have different algorithms for different functions. Some may not have any self-awareness algorithm running, some may have something similar but not exactly the same as our own self-awareness algorithm. That’s where the mirror test fails. We can only observe the who-knows-how-many-levels of causality that lead to those animals to show or not show self-aware behaviors in front of a mirror. We can’t say anything consequential about the actual algorithm(s) running on their OS when they stand in front of a mirror. We are just running our own set of self-awareness algorithms when we stand in front of a mirror. It seems like these algorithms change according to evolution, just like other systems within the multicellular ecosystem that make up the individual organisms. We often see animals that demonstrate these “self-aware” traits because of similar evolutionary conditions, like cats and dogs have evolved to run a lot of socializing algorithms that mingle well with our own social algorithms.
Whether the self-reflective aspect of running these algorithms on our own OS makes one feel certain way about eating meat is in and of itself the result of the relationship between multi-threading the self-aware part and the self-preservation part in terms of labeling kins and such.
At this point we aren’t even conclusive about where to draw the boundary between hardware and software. We end up distinguishing between OS and simple firmware as conscious and unconscious. We mostly reduce the firmware down to simple physical reactions by the laws of physics while the OS exhibits something magical beyond those physical reactions in simpler systems. Is there something truly different that sets OS apart from firmware, or is it just our lack of understanding of the underlying mechanics? This of course touches upon the argument of determinism, which is just looking at the same systems differently.